A fraud management system architecture for next-generation networks

This paper proposes an original architecture for a fraud management system (FMS) for convergent. Next-generation networks (NGNs), which are based on the Internet protocol (IP). The architecture has the potential to satisfy the requirements of flexibility and application-independency for effective fraud detection in NGNs that cannot be met by traditional FMSs. The proposed architecture has a thorough four-stage detection process that analyses billing records in IP detail record (IPDR) format - an emerging IP-based billing standard - for signs of fraud. Its key feature is its usage of neural networks in the form of self-organising maps (SOMs) to help uncover unknown NGN fraud scenarios. A prototype was implemented to test the effectiveness of using a SOM for fraud detection and is also described in the paper.